Round-Up: PEN America Responds to Trump, the Brooklyn Children’s Book Fair, and Johnny Cash’s Poems
From PEN America’s response to the election of a new collection of poems by Johnny Cash, here are last week’s biggest literary headlines.
Visible Worlds : An Interview With Invisible Publishing’s Leigh Nash
Originally founded by Robbie MacGregor, Megan Fildes and Nic Boshart, Invisible Publishing released its first fiction titles in Spring 2007, and “has come to include works of graphic fiction and non-fiction, pop culture biographies, experimental poetry, and prose.” Formerly the managing editor at Coach House Books, Leigh Nash joined
The Female Gaze and the Same Old Songs
I recently went with my husband to a concert. The artist we saw writes gut-wrenching songs, and he and his band put on a great show. But I got restless about half way through. “It’s just so masculine,” I said to my husband, and not long after that the
David Lida’s ONE LIFE is the Injection of Humanity for Your Post-Election Blues
Post-election, escapism is the only salve when no one can seem to look each other in the eye. David Lida’s newest novel, ONE LIFE, is exactly the dark-humored piece of literature everyone should be indulging in right now.
Notes on the State of Virginia: Journey to the Center of an American Document, Queries XVII-XVIII
Here’s a confession. When I talk about NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA, I sometimes refer to Jefferson’s “queries” as “cantos.” Like a poetic canto, which stands or falls on the music of its syllables, Jefferson’s queries must have enough tensile strength to contain his ideas, and space to
A Gift of Sorts
This story starts in the tall-walled house of a local poet. Aluminum foil trays of lasagna. Iceberg lettuce. Wool ties, snug dresses. We are all here together to celebrate the visitation of the poet Edward Hirsch. He has just read from his most recent collection, titled GABRIEL, an elegy
Space: Renegotiating Rhetorical Boundaries
In the aftermath of this election, it’s undeniable this country is a contested space, and that its citizens are hungry for new language to describe its landscape and reshape its boundaries. Within contemporary poetry, many writers of color are responding to this desire by renegotiating the rhetoric of the
A Stone, a Leaf, a Southern Genius
From the moment he steps onscreen in director Michael Grandage’s Genius Thomas Wolfe (played by Jude Law) is an aberration. At 6’5, the writer was literally larger than life. He often worked hovering over a refrigerator-cum-writing desk.
Review: LUCINDA by John Beer
Remarkably, Lucinda seems both composition exercise and confession (“once again the text finds itself / helplessly stuck between two distinct / critical foci, pinioned”), as unclassifiable and as exciting as the more than 200-year-old book that inspired it.
Poet Activist Spotlight: Lynn Melnick
I could not be more grateful for an excuse to escape into rereading If I Should Say I Have Hope. Situated in another of time, I might write praising the wondrous lyricality in Melnick’s poems, how lush her language, how slick her line breaks are, how skillfully strange and